The present invention is directed to a bird feeder system for attracting and feeding a variety of birds at the same time. In addition, the bird feeder system of the present invention prevents non-bird species from gaining access to the bird food placed in the system for attracting birds.
For hundreds of years bird watching enthusiasts and inventors have been concerned with the problem of supplying bird food to attract birds without one species of birds dominating the area at which bird food is provided. For example, if only one bird feeder is used, then relatively large birds, such as blue jays, prevent smaller birds, such as chickadees, from feeding at the bird feeder. The large birds prevent the smaller birds from eating at the same time, owing to the large birds driving off the smaller birds, or by intimidating the small birds and discouraging them from approaching the bird feeder merely by the presence of the large birds at the feeder. Another long-felt problem, for which there has been heretofore no adequate solution, is the problem of rodents, such as squirrels and rats, eating the bird food directly from the bird feeder and/or eating bird food knocked from the bird feeder onto the ground from which such rodents even more easily feed.
There have been attempts in the prior art to overcome these dual problems of attracting and feeding different species of birds at the same time, while discouraging rodents from eating the bird food provided therefor.
One example of these prior attempts at feeding several species of birds concurrently at one feeder, is found in U.S. Pat. No. 4,986,219 to Harris. In the Harris device, a long, thin trough for receiving bird feed therein is provided so that many birds of several species and size ranges all can feed together with sufficient "elbow room" to avoid interspecies conflict. The long, thin trough for holding bird food disclosed in Harris is made up of subelements which encircle a central support post and from which the trough is loosely suspended. Drawbacks of the Harris device include that the construction of the narrow, multi-element feeding trough is relatively complicated, there is no physical separation between the difference parts of the feeding trough on which different specie of birds are intended to feed, and the feeding trough is intentionally loosely supported so that any bird landing on one part of the elongated feeding trough necessarily moves the entire trough. Although this feature achieves the Harris goal of providing a bird feeder having "dynamic action" for enhancing the bird watchers viewing pleasure, such movement is believed to frighten away the birds feeding on the trough when a new bird lands, and, hence, moves the surface on which the feeding birds are sitting. In the Harris patent it was recognized that sometimes small birds such as chickadees and tufted titmice would have to perch on the element which support the elongated trough while waiting for larger birds to leave the feeding trough. Thus, small birds frustrated in an initial attempt to use the Harris device may be, effectively, driven off to find an alternative non-competitive food source.
A further attempt at luring a variety of species of birds to one feeding site is found in U.S. Pat. No. 1,749,497 to McGlashan, in which multiple feeding pans are fixedly spaced one above another, and the entire array of vertically spaced feeding pans is suspended from a bracket. The McGlashan bird lure has one of the same drawbacks as in the above-described Harris device, in that a large bird landing on any one of the vertically spaced feeding pans will necessarily cause the other feeding pans to move, thereby frightening off the birds which had been sitting and feeding at the other pans.
There have likewise been attempts to prevent rodents from eating the feed placed on bird feeders. For example, in printed United Kingdom Patent Application GB 2 209 456 to MacKereth, a bird feeder protector is disclosed in which a bird feeder is hung above the ground from an elongated suspension line attached at each of its two ends to support members. There are smooth, light weight, rigid discs having holes through the central axes thereof, and through which the suspension line travels, so that each of the smooth discs can be threaded onto the suspension line and placed between the centrally located bird feeder hanging from the middle of the suspension line and the ends of the suspension line attached to the support members. The smooth discs extend transversely from and rotate relative to the suspension line. In this manner, animals attempting to gain access to the centrally suspended bird feeder progressively lose sight of the bird feeder as they crawl along the suspension line while the smooth, rotatable discs afford the additional protective benefit of being difficult to climb over or otherwise move past owing to their rotatability and smoothness.
None of these above-described devices, nor any other known conventional devices, have proven to be a completely reliable system for accommodating a variety of species of birds feeding at the same time, while also preventing rodents from having access to the bird food.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a bird feeder system which provides for the concurrent feeding of a variety of birds species, while also preventing rodents from eating the bird food provided for attracting birds.